But if the ‘bad aliens’ have taken the side of the fossil fuel industry, we should not also ignore the angelic race hailing from the Blue Star who have decided to come to the aid of humankind and life on Earth. For a secret weapon in the fight to save the world from climate disaster is now steadily being deployed. And the global fossil fuel based auto industry doesn’t even begin to have a clue as to what’s about to hit them.

Like the body snatchers, this weapon has also taken the form of something we humans see as normal and innocuous. It has come to inhabit mere automobiles. For beneath the metal hoods, glass windows and roofs, and sustainably designed interiors of seemingly familiar Tesla road vehicles resides the electrical beating heart of alien technology. A living, almost biological, smart-tech that is pulsing within the fixed metal, plastic, and glass forms we see across the world and on its streets and byways.

The tech possesses living characteristics in that it can change and grow. For after each Tesla is produced, the starship inside awakens, empowering these vehicles to transform in a very autobot-like fashion. Possessed of the much the same hardware as many ‘normal’ electrical vehicles, the smart, alien tech that runs the battery in the breast of each machine is capable of learning and improving. Vehicles coming off the lines with a mere 200 mile range may see improvements that jump it to 230 miles (see Your Tesla May Have Secret Powers). Starship Model 3s with stated 310 mile ranges may suddenly and unexpectedly stretch their legs to 334 miles. The cars may learn to accelerate better using the physical materials that they already possess. They may learn to charge faster. And sitting in their driveways at night, after drinking deep of afternoon solar panel trapped energy, they may dream strange dreams of a vital new world that beats back the oppression of global hothouse extinction even as they learn to cut off the choking fumes of coal-fired powerplants.

(Are we really living in a space opera? No. But the stakes are just as epic. Video source: Iscandar.)

But this starship — posing as automobile — counter-force faces a serious challenge. Earthling means of mass producing the new alien technology that will give each person the opportunity to possess a world-saving starship is presently struggling to ramp up to face down the dark forces of hothouse extinction. Tesla is, after all, just a flawed human-run company. And so only 440 of the cutting-edge Model 3 craft had been produced by the end of October.

The orange skinned, one eyed, fossil fueled political people eaters have, thus far, been unsuspecting of the Blue Star forces in their midst. Perhaps Tesla’s mighty struggle to produce these new craft will provide for them some foreshadowing of the death blow to their nefarious designs that is to follow.

114 Comments

wili

Not very surprising tough, strong or very strong El Niños tend to be followed by a “double up” La Niña. Only case is the 1965/1966 El Niño that was followed by cool neutral conditions before a “double up” El Niño emerged in 1968-1970.

wili

Yeah, here in Minnesota they are predicting a ‘normal’ winter after three very abnormally warm ones. In past decades an El Nino would generally mean that we would be in for quite an anomalously brutally cold one. We’ll see. I just hope we don’t get deluges of rain on Christmas…that was really depressing last year.

That’s the four hottest years on record in the past four years, all qualitatively hotter than all previous years. Who wants to bet that in 2018 there will be no significant drop in global temperatures as in past La Nina years? We are in a new paradigm, a new climate regime. There will be no respite. 2014-2017 is not an anomaly, it’s the new normal. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that 2018 will be hotter than any year prior to 2014, and the next El Nino will bring even more paradigmatic change. The steady and unmistakable disappearance of “low” years since 1980, six uninterrupted years beginning 2010 of drastically increasing global temps, three successive record hot years, by huge margins, the past three years…data don’t lie. But the big, most important data might be the steady extinction of cooler years.

wili

I have a friend who is convince that ‘the singularity’ has already come and gone, and for some time now, some overarching robot mind has taken over humans society and made it work to the advantage of future machines but not for a very good future for humans (not a very good present for many humans already, of course).

These days it’s hard to write scifi that reality hasn’t already caught up with, or is about to.

Well, thinking machines are definitely here. The question is can we apply the right limits and use them for the good of us all? Or do we get into another real mess of unintended consequences on a similar scale to what we are seeing now with climate change. Hopefully we learn to be more alert to the human failures that inevitably get amplified by powerful technology if it’s not well regulated.

coloradobob

A tangle of politics and problems may force yet another delay in long-sought updates to the broke, beleaguered U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Congress has the unenviable task of putting NFIP back in the black without raising rates too quickly on folks who can’t afford to leave vulnerable coastal homes. And the weather isn’t helping.

The NFIP was due for reauthorization in September, after several years of challenge in the wake of the enormously costly Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Then came Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria this year—which complicated matters further by adding another $10-plus billion to the program’s $25-billion debt.

With extreme weather events now x4 more likely than in the past, this is definitely an unenviable task. Think a major part will be looking at where we build and where, ultimately, we decide not to insure. The boundaries of the system have changed.

So not taking climate change into account is a systemic failure on the order of the financial collapse of 2008 or greater. Eventually, these losses come home to roost to dramatic systemic effect. In order to mitigate, you have to recognize systemic realities as is and start moving investment and capital flows in such a way as to enable resiliency.

wili

Yeah, it’s the outlier events, becoming more and more common, that many people, even after this fall’s set of horrific cyclones, just don’t seem to get. They hear about sea level rise quantified in centimeters per year or decade, and it seems like a very gradual thing that is easy to plan around and that maybe people will react naturally to by moving away from areas as the sea gradually encroaches. They ignore both the perverse incentives in these programs, as well as the fact that gradual slr is just the platform on top of which ever more horrific storms will wreak sudden and sometimes total or near total destruction on location after location.

coloradobob

Off topic, Replying to Deb, that asked about respiratory masks a few posts ago:
I don´t remember what DT´s suggestion was, either, but I have a bit of experience with pollution-protection masks. I have a severe allergy to a extremely common substance (eugenol, which is added to cigarettes in order to better addict people… one of the 4500+ toxic substances in cigarettes), so I use air pollution masks daily (can´t get out in the street without them). I´ve tested quite a few, before deciding on using masks from Respro, in the UK (http://respro.com/pollution-masks). I´ve been using those for 3 years now.

They sell online worldwide (that´s how I can get those in Brasil) and do a very decent job of keeping chemicals out. They claim to filter about 80% of the pollution (the carbon-filter model), and it seems compatible with the results of wearing one. For me that means that I can walk right past someone smoking and have only a cough attack that lasts for a few minutes instead of needing to go to the hospital for IV corticoids and oxygen.

Most important, Respro masks are comfortable to wear for hours (though valves need to be changed if used for more than 2hs straight, as they get wet and stop working) and they can be used even during an asthma attack. There are agrochemical masks that filter quite more of the pollution (no reaction for the first 5 minutes of being around someone smoking), but they´re heavy and impede breathing during an asthma attack, so in the end, they don´t work as well.

Actually, no Paul. Solving climate change solves the climate change problem. And in order to solve climate change, we will be acting in a way that helps to solve the other problems. In other words, you’ve got it backwards. Action = the originator. Solution = progress. Climate change = existential problem of high importance.

paul

Maybe you’re right Robert but once we solve the climate problem I just don’t see us suddenly stopping the industrial fishing of the seas, or the similar trawling of jungle and bush for animal products. Or the manipulation and dispersal of modified genes, or mining or deforestation or damming. It won’t stop the massive existential pressures on our wildlife. I won’t go on.

Poor resource management in the form of over-use of renewable resources in a healthy world is far more easy to correct than in the context of climate change. We’ve dealt with the issue of poor resource management by bad actors or through neglect for some time. These are far more solvable than dealing with a mass extinction level event caused by climate change. Furthermore, an environmental movement enabled to prevent worst case climate change is an environmental movement far better enabled to prevent overfishing and other such issues.

To dig just a little deeper, shifting away from fossil fuel burning also helps to reduce a number of harmful externalities that impact resources. For example, substitution for plastics reduces harmful materials pollution and adding renewables reduces societal water use. Other climate change related adaptations such as shifting toward less meat intensive farming also increases the resource footprint. And permaculture type farming produces a fish crop as well as a vegetable crop, which can help reduce pressure on ocean fish stocks through demand competition.

The issue, Paul, is not so much single solution as it is broad based in that moving toward sustainability is a change in practices that has synergistic helpful impact. Renewables is just the tip of the spear in this regard, though it is a very important one.

Though I’ve been very patient with the mob of doomers that troll this site, it is not my duty to continue to convince those of you who are bound and determined to wallow in apathy. This blog has a mission. And it is not to provide a platform for a false equivalency based discussion between those who think the human race is doomed and those who do not. It is to produce impetus for action. So if you’re not on board, then I don’t really need you here.

Bob recently identifies a decline in insect population. As an example, the likely primary cause is overly prolific use of pesticides combined with specifically engineered plants to manage higher levels of these toxins. One sustainability practice related to climate change resiliency is moving a larger portion of farming indoors. This reduces a net need for pesticide use. Also various permaculture and natural farming practices aim to remove pesticide use. As with fossil fuels, we face entrenched industries that have a penchant for doing things a certain way that is presently rather harmful. So this effort is aimed at confronting systemic harmful behavior.

The climate issue is the primary focus of this particular blog at present. To shift the focus from this point in comments is drifting off topic. However, what we can say is that the model we are using for systemic transformation and confrontation of harmful actors can be duplicated. That what we are doing here enables that.

Paul, overfishing, overhunting and deforestation are also part of the climate problem. Stopping the use of fossil fuels is the primary action against climate change, and the most effective, but personally, I doubt that *only* that can be sufficient to keep heating under 2 degrees.

Can you really imagine keeping the world under 2 degrees in a scenario were the Amazon rainforest, the Asian Jungle, the Boreal forests and the rainforests of Congo had been burned, where mangroves have been destroyed, where whales & fish no longer sequester carbon to the ocean floor? Just stoping the source of extra carbon while destroying all the negative feedbacks that pull carbon away from the atmosphere won´t cut it.

But CAN we stop overfishing, overhunting and deforestation? Of course we can, if we want, it´s actually easier than stopping using fossil fuels, and it doesn´t require no technological miracle. For example, this study in Brasil estimated how much would it cost to stop deforestation (all of it) in the country (http://escolhas.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/171027_Relat%C3%B3rio-vFinalsite.pdf – it´s in portuguese). Talking JUST about cost (not considering any gains from keeping the forest intact as economic gains), using already tested extant policies, which are expected to give results as good as they´ve already showed (no gains in efficience for widespread use), the cost of deforestation zero in Brasil is a bit less than 1 Billion dollars/year. A lot for an individual, but normal flow of cash for a government (the problem is political will, not money).

There´s a population bomb still ticking, ok, but it has been slowly defused, as woman around the globe gain more say on their lifes. Fertility rates have fallen in most of the world, and they´ll keep falling, as long as woman keep gaining independence. It´s no coincidence that the countries where fertility rates are higher have the worst profile in woman´s rights, but the cultural change won´t stop at their borders. Population will grow for a few decades more, because of inertia, and things are going to get worst before they get better, but that problem has been correcting itself since the pill appeared.

We are looking in an abism? Yes, we are. But instead of gazing on it until becoming it, we can build a bridge to cross it. It does take a plural work, with many fronts to battle, opposed by a lot of big players, with no simple slogan-solutions being able to solve it all, but if it was easy, it wouldn´t be worthwhile.

Jeremy in Wales

Remember that Nissan is in alliance with Renault and that Carlos Ghosn is CEO of both so you also have the Renualt Zoe (cheaper than a Leaf). This also gives them scaling benefits and a head start on other car manufacturers.

Nissan and Renault are companies that have business models that are presently dependent of sales of ICE vehicles. The Leaf and the Zoe are excellent cars. Excellent electrical vehicles. The manufacturing and materials chains enabling their construction are also very helpful. This has effectively turned a fossil fuel based revenue dependent industry into an industry that’s dependent upon 10-15 percent renewable based revenue.

A decent start.

However, there are a few things that we need to look at when comparing Nissan/Renault with Tesla.

1. Tesla is systemically all-renewable. From feedstock to production chain, the entire industry is dedicated to selling batteries, EVs, solar panels and systems that integrate these three.
2. Tesla’s business model is based on selling first market EVs and then turning the after market batteries into storage systems that replace things like coal and gas plants. Nissan-Renault are just getting their feet wet in this area.
3. Tesla owns the charging stations. I’ll repeat this. Tesla owns the charging stations. I don’t see any other major automaker making a similar investment in charging infrastructure.
4. Tesla sells solar panels in addition to its grid storage based sales. This enables it to directly integrate solar to battery.
5. Because of all this, Tesla’s economic incentive is to lobby for renewable energy focused policy. In other words, no fossil fuel conflict of interest. No concern over stranded assets in the form of ICE only production lines and sunk investment into those lines making share holders weak in the knees or causing CEOs headaches about balancing capital flows.

So I guess what I’m saying is that what’s happening at Nissan and Renault is encouraging. But that they are not integrated renewable energy companies of a caliber equivalent to Tesla. Presently, on the level of western industries, no one is. Those attempting to compete on the level of vehicle production alone aren’t looking at the bigger picture. And even in that instance, many are far behind when it comes to producing an EV that is strategically designed to harness the various extraordinary advantages of all-electric tech.

Jeremy in Wales

While Tesla is a very interesting intergrated company based around the battery manufacturing giving a one stop shop for many applications, one company will not save the world. It may provide a model for other new companies but we also want old companies to change and if possible use assets that otherwise are stranded. We do not want large parts of the world to resemble Detroit with the huge waste of resources that represents.
Car companies have rarely been totally intergrated and support many parts manufacturers – an organism of sorts – and to my knowledge have not tried to own the fuel network on any scale. Yes, Tesla have to work in a different enviroment from the early 20th Century but chargers do not have to be provided by the car company, in Europe I would suggest that the biggest problem is the multitude of providers, apps, registration and payment difficulties. One App & payment options common to all charges would be a helpful innovation.
You will note that the battery is assembled by Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) – a joint venture between Nissan, NEC and NEC Energy Devices, at Zama, Japan. So hopefully they realise the potential as have Tesla.
Tesla have shown the World a different possibility, that we have to be grateful for, I agree. But we need competition and continued innovation – Lithium batteries may not be the last word in energy storage for example, in addition to being a fire hazard (remote but it does exist) and early problems in hot climateshttp://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-technology/potential-breakthroughs-in-battery-technology/155481/https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery/
So the problem Tesla might face is they have invested in the wrong technology or it comes to dominate when the world could have something far better. So we need lots of players ideally.

coloradobob

Yep, it’s the battery plants, when your car battery is spent , you put it in the garage , and it runs your house. No one understands , that running a washing machine , is a far lighter lift, than going 69 mph down the 405.

coloradobob

It’s a total solar package One has panels on their roof , it charges the “old car” batteries. They run your home. When you come hone at night they top off your car, or top off your house. Your car could be parked under an carport that has solar panels at work. It charges all day.

If Walmart did this in their parking lots , they would never be on the grid.

Hello, Bob. This is absolutely a concern. And it is likely related to combined factors that include climate change and pesticide use. We do need to look to care for living creatures withing natural systems more. I am of the opinion that to do this, human systems need to step back from encroachment on the natural world even as we look for better ways to farm and manage land.

A helpful point is that indoor vertical farming provides us with a means to harden societies to damages from climate change, to reduce encroachment, and to reduce harmful pesticide use. That’s just one example. But, in my view, an important one.

In any case, it is important to talk both about problems and potential solutions. If you only focus on an endless series of problems, then it becomes difficult to see a path forward.

Richard J

Tesla may be sexy, but it will have to increase it’s production by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude, to have much impact on fossil fuel use. Is there that much lithium or rare earth metals available? Even if so, I don’t see how it helps much, unless we move to almost exclusively wind, solar, or other renewable electrical generation. That seems very far away. So for now, I can’t see Tesla as much more than a rich man’s toy. I’ll keep driving my unsexy Prius. Not that I could afford a Tesla anyway.

As long as we are dreaming, my personal vision of an eco-friendly transportation system would involve conversion of some existing roads into railbeds for an electrified publicly owned passenger rail system, plus a network of foot and bike paths, and just plow up most of the rest. Driving a personal automobile could then become a felony crime, ecocide. In addition, all fossil-fueled aircraft and most ships should be recycled and replaced with a fleet of modern wind-powered passenger and freight vessels. It wasn’t so long ago that travel between seaports or continents was a matter of days or weeks, rather than hours. It certainly wouldn’t kill us to go back to that.

Oil and gas powered transportation must go away somehow, if we plan to leave an inhabitable world for our grandchildren.

Tesla started out producing less than 1,000 vehicles per year. It presently produces 100,000 vehicles per year. that is two orders of magnitude. Total global annual vehicle production is in the range of 80 million vehicles per year. Tesla does not need to produce all the world’s cars (2.8 orders of magnitude) to help to transform the auto industry. It just needs to provide enough competition to hit the major automaker profit margins and provide pressure for them to compete. This is happening now. It’s one of the reasons why we have vehicles like the Volt and the Bolt.

Government policy in the form of rising CAFE standards has also helped. But Tesla provides the high quality spoiler for ICE vehicles.

Tesla’s main advantage is that it is a vertically integrated renewable energy company. Other companies will need to adopt this business model or they will be unable to compete going forward. That’s the point you’re missing here. In other words, the reason why Tesla is sexy is because it is the trend setter.

On current tracking, Tesla is set to double vehicle production this year even in the event that it struggles ramping up Model 3 production. A vehicle that is easily capable of meeting 200,000 per year + sales on its own. And we could well see Tesla hitting near or above 300,000 vehicles per year in 2018. The U.S. EV market is set to double or triple as a result of both Model 3 and relatively high quality competing vehicles in 2018.

With China and India trying to duplicate Tesla’s renewable energy integrated business model on a national level, we are going to start seeing pressure on gasoline and diesel demand in the 2018 to 2020 timeframe. At first, this will be marginal. However, by the early 2020s, the prospects for continued demand growth considerably narrow.

As an automaker, who is leading this transformation process? Tesla. And it’s Tesla’s business model that people are now trying to duplicate and improve on.

Jim

As Robert mentions above, Tesla and Elon Musk’s goal was showing the world that personal electric vehicles were possible, affordable, and desirable. Not only did they achieve that objective, but along the way they kicked off the age of large scale Lithium Ion batteries production – there are 20 or so large battery manufacturing facilities under construction, are well on their way to overcoming to objections to residential PV (aesthetics), and have spurred an initiative where many world governments are considering a ban on Internal Combustion Engines. That’s a lot of progress in 5 -10 years.

I understand where you’re coming from with the statement that Tesla, up to the Model 3 has been a rich man’s car, but that was Tesla’s strategy. Build a highly desirable performance oriented electric car, sold a premium price and use the proceeds from that to build a more affordable car, the Model 3. Tesla was successful enough with that strategy to get the global automotive business to pivot to EV, across a broad range of price points.

As for the Prius, I rather like the car myself. My daughter has one. I never understood why Toyota invested so heavily in the car, and didn’t pursue adding a progressively larger battery pack as costs dropped, at least until very recently. Toyota had a 10+ year head start on more environmentally friendly transportation and squandered that lead. They could have been a contender.

coloradobob

Yep. It’s in the batteries, Bob. Batteries and panels. Poles and wires = optional now. Although given economies of scale, I still think that centralized plants will still be a thing. Big panel farms, big battery farms, big wind farms. So some poles and wires. But a lot of people at home will increasingly be enabled to cut the wire if they want to.

coloradobob

Leland Palmer

I guess we really haven’t been taken over by the Lizard People, but damn Trump gives a good imitation. Great article. Glad to hear that Tesla is up to 440 Model 3s.

The critics might as well shut up, I think. Tesla owners and prospective buyers are intelligent, patient people fully onboard with the overall stated goal of Elon Musk and Tesla – to fight global warming.

That demand backstop should be a sign of confidence for Tesla. I think the company should probably do its best to be methodical about the Model 3 launch, despite the high level of pressure. I suppose the one bit that does sometimes cut both ways for Tesla is its penchant to set ambitious goals. But it wouldn’t have gotten so far in the first place without that trait. People should realize this when criticizing Tesla. They’ve threaded this needle before, in other words.

I think we’ll probably have 1,000 to 3,000 Model 3s by end year. Not sure if they’ll make 5,000 per week by March. But even if its by May, it will be a hell of an achievement for a new auto company with a renewables only business model like Tesla.

Leland Palmer

“US Senate Republicans have put forward their own tax reform plan this week which, unlike the tax reform bill proposed by the House, does not take aim at renewable energy provisions such as the wind Production Tax Credit.”

So, if the Senate tax plan passes, we’re supposed to trust that the Senate Republicans would defend renewable energy when the House and Senate versions of the bill are merged?

The premise for the bill is about as nonsensical as you can get. If they actually wanted to close loop holes, they could have just worked with Democrats when Obama was President. This is all about a stealth tax increase on the Middle Class, attacking Medicare and Medicaid long term, attacking social security long term, and playing yet one more game of budget deficit chicken. Blowing another 1.7 trillion hole in the budget is not what we need. More income inequality is not what we need. Of course republicans are pushing this. Their ideology is what got us here in this giant mess in the first place.

wili

This of course is just costs for the USA. The folk getting bombed have their own costs. Imagine if this money had been used on educations, humanitarian purposes in the region, and the conversion of the region, the US and much of the rest of the world to renewables! What a horrific waste of opportunities, money, and of course lives.

Let’s remember on this day the folks who got enormously rich building and selling these bombs and other means of destruction, even as we mourn those on all sides who ended up having to fight these awful wars, and the even greater number of civilians whose lives have been obliterated.

paul

I do wonder what the world would have looked like if we had spent the money instead on global renewable energy based economic development. Renewables removes power from the hands of bad actors — especially if its deployment is more equal and aimed at leveraging related increasing levels of employment. All those bombs dropped are little more than advertising leaflets for the next extremist uprising. One feeds the other.

wili

Susan Anderson Behn

You have no idea I how pleased I was to see this post..have passed it on to the organizer of our local Canadian Electric Vehicle Organization, and expect to see you quoted in their next Newsletter….Lateral thinking is so often missing, glad to see that someone is taking this to the next level!

Paul

Here’s something that I was not aware of…acidifying ocean water absorbs less CO2. Here’s an excerpt from the BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) report “Exploring Ocean Change” report:

“By absorbing approximately 30 per cent of the human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted every year, the ocean slows down the increase of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and thereby mitigates global warming. But the more carbon dioxide is dissolved in seawater, the lower the ocean’s buffer capacity becomes, limiting its ability to take up more. Warming further increases the problem: with rising temperatures, seawater holds less and less CO2.”

The brochure, which covers many aspects and consequences of ocean acidification, is very detailed. It can be found here:

redskylite

Thanks for this imaginative perspective on current affairs. Growing up I was an avid S.F reader and had a treasured list of contemporary authors. Even the most impressive Arthur C. Clarke novel could not compare to the magnitude of the current situation and the way we are tackling the juggernaut of climate change. Energy advances are moving fast, especially in the field of transport, at 70 it’s difficult to keep up with the changes.

Thanks for the “Scribbler” narratives which helps a lot.

Wonder if this following inhabitat subject is unreachable or will it lead somewhere useful in the not too far future.

Groundbreaking quark fusion generates 10 time as much energy as nuclear fusion

“Physicists at Tel Aviv University and University of Chicago have discovered that quark fusion could be an even more energy-packed reaction than nuclear fusion. Although the scientists were originally concerned about quark fusion’s potential destructive power and had considered keeping the discovery secret, they came to learn that the process, still theoretical, would most likely be safe for civilian use. “

redskylite

“But subsequent calculations showed that it would be impossible to cause a chain reaction with quarks because they exist for too short a period of time—approximately one picosecond—not long enough to set off another baryon. They decay into much smaller, less dangerous lighter quarks.

The researchers point out that their work is still purely theoretical. They have not tried to fuse bottom quarks, though they note it should be technically feasible at the LHC should others find doing so a worthwhile experiment.”

Still theoretical means that a lot of work will need to be done to see if this is an energy source that can be managed practically. Ironically, the lack of a chain reaction may, on net, make this a difficult energy source to manage. We’ll see. Years, decades or possibly never.

For now, though, we have a massively scaling renewable energy production base that is taking down fossil fuels as we speak.

redskylite

And here’s a guy who is equipped to solve many critical problems we face, the type we need in abundance right now . . .

“What attracted me to the course was that it incorporated the latest cutting-edge techniques. I studied full-time for one year and found the programme really enjoyable. I learned about the geoscience behind climate change and renewable technologies that can be deployed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Greg

Hah! Now this is an irony for me. Hopefully, for Shell, a mass add. And I wonder if execs are looking at Tesla’s massive charging station infrastructure and saying — ‘we are looking at loosing gas, do we want to lose the stations too?’

Jeremy in Wales

Exactly! But they have the inner city urban sites and in Europe many people have no detached house and drive on which to charge a car, you cannot have wires drapped over the pavement (sidewalk for americans). Also the petrol stations have shops attached which make the larger part of the profit on these sites. But this is still a boost for electric vehicles.

Shawn Redmond

“Studies on the risks of neonicotinoids have often focused on bees that have been experiencing population declines. However, it is not just bees that are being affected by these insecticides,” said Christy Morrissey, U of S biology professor.

Research led by Margaret Eng, a post-doctoral fellow in Morrissey’s lab, is the first study to show that imidacloprid (neonicotinoid) and chlorpyrifos (organophosphate) —two of the most widely used insecticides worldwide—are directly toxic to seed-eating songbirds. The paper, published in Scientific Reports, shows these chemicals can directly affect songbird migration.

“These chemicals are having a strong impact on songbirds. We are seeing significant weight loss and the birds’ migratory orientation being significantly altered,” said Eng, who also worked with colleagues from York University. “Effects were seen from eating the equivalent of just three to four imidacloprid treated canola seeds or eight chlorpyrifos granules a day for three days.”

Jim

And if you want to read more about Welrum’s “accomplishments” – like loosening regulations on workplace exposure to silica, or NOT promising to undo California’s auto emissions standards – the article is below.

Apparently industry groups are miffed that Scott Pruitt isn’t moving fast enough to dismantle the EPA mandate to regulate CO2 as a pollutant – despite this being the finding of the Supreme Court in 2007. I guess some business and corporate interests don’t feel they need to abide by Supreme Court rulings….

Vic

A new study finds that sulfur dioxide emissions in China fell by 75% since 2007, while India’s increased by 50%.

“The rapid decrease of sulfur dioxide emissions in China far exceeds expectations and projections,” said Can Li, the study’s lead author.
“This suggests that China is implementing sulfur dioxide controls beyond what climate modelers have taken into account.”

It’s good to see that China is concerned about emissions. Overall, reductions in coal burning is combining to have a positive net effect. We may see some reduction in global dimming as well. But the net effect of reduced emissions will be very helpful overall.

Abel Adamski

Towards the latter part
Sometimes the right strategy is to grab and own an issue, to exclude (not invite) the other party, to tie the issue to core coalition values and use the intensity to increase the political power of the coalition.

That’s what the right did with national security during the Cold War. They claimed the issue, associated themselves with it, commanded public trust on it, and — crucially — worked overtime to exclude the left from it, to make Democrats look weak and feckless. They didn’t beg Democrats to agree with their hawkishness. They dared them to disagree.

They made a fight of it, and they won. That’s why Democrats’ unofficial slogan for much of the ‘90s and early ‘00s was, “Hey, We’re Tough Too!”

The left has never been as good at unified aggression and probably never will be, for reasons Grossman’s book explains well.

But it may be time to face the fact that there is no magic message, no persuasive strategy, that can get us out of this mess. There’s no persuading the conservative base without conservative elites and there’s no persuading conservative elites as long as their material interests point the wrong direction.

It may just be that we’re not all going to get along — that the only way to move forward on this is to fight it out.

If that’s true, then what matters most on the left is not the breadth of agreement, but the depth. It is intensity that wins political battles. The only way Democrats can achieve progress on this is to intensify the fight.

Tepid “free market” messages, forever hoping to win over an unwinnable right, won’t do that. They do nothing to inspire those who already care and are primed for action.

For Democrats, raising intensity would mean making it a fight, staking a claim, defining the core values involved, telling vivid stories with heroes and villains and repeating them frequently. It would mean making climate change and clean energy tier-one priorities — organizing around them, talking about them at every opportunity, pushing them into the news and popular culture.

It would mean, rather than begging Republicans for assent or small scraps of policy assistance, doing everything possible to publicize their intransigence and make it core to their identity. Tie it around their necks every time a microphone appears; make them own it.

Reality still matters. What we have in the US is not a “difference of opinion” about climate change, it’s conservatives being mistaken about some very basic facts. They’re mistaken because they’ve been lied to and misled by leaders and influencers within their own tribe.

That’s the situation. But it’s not stable. The weather is only getting worse, young people are only getting more engaged, and clean energy is only getting cheaper. Climate change and clean energy will be winning issues in the long term.

Why not claim and own them while it’s still possible? Then the GOP’s motto in the 2020s can be: “Hey, We Like Clean Energy Too!”

In reality, Democrats probably don’t have the wherewithal to mount that kind of fight. But that’s the only thing that has a chance of breaking the stalemate. The quest to persuade US conservatives on climate change has been extraordinarily long, vigorous, and well-documented. It has also been largely fruitless. Perhaps it’s time for a little agonism.

Agrees with my experience. I have a 90 year old acquaintance who is beginning to have some cognitive issues, but who is still pretty functional. Recently she stated about the weather, out of the blue, “it sure seems warmer than it used to”. I then understood why persuasion has not proved a very effective strategy against climate deniers.

Steven Blaisdell

You need both breadth and depth. Depth touches the heart of the problem. Breadth moves both progressive democrats and moderate democrats together. We need both wings to fly. We need both Firebrands and more level headed Abraham Lincoln types. But the end goal, as ending slavery was for Lincoln, is ending the fossil fuel energy curse, inequality, and so many other ills that have been visited upon us by the inflicting on us of a very harmful set of ideologies and worldviews that by their very nature support harmful industries and hurtful governments.

In other words, we need to elect both the Northams and Clintons as well as the Bernie Sanders and Warren types. If we’re going to move forward on the Democratic side, we’ve got to do it together. This past 2017 election is a model in how that can be done. The 2016 election on how we should not operate.

Bernie failed when he made it about him. Clinton failed when she made it about her. They both failed when they failed to come together for the good of the party in a Clinton + Bernie ticket. Democrats failed when they let themselves be turned against one another by Russian agents and the right wingers who enabled them. And anyone who supported Jill Stein failed to realize that a vote for Stein was enabling Trump. Democrats failed to look at the election strategically and to realize that our friends in the party who we may disagree with somewhat were far more helpful than any republican. And in 2017, realizing these failures, we reversed all of that. The question is, can we carry this forward to 2018. We need to. We need to have fire in the belly. And we realize that we need both the clear and urgent repudiation of the failed republican policies as well as our unity to move forward. We need both wings of the democratic party, in other words, to fly.

The message, however, needs to be as deep as it is clear. In messaging, we should absolutely focus on depth. The issues we need to own are — real security (not fake security of a party that panders to and enables our enemies), energy independence and climate change response, and economic equality and justice for all.

As for the republicans… Yeah. I think there’s no way to reason with the party that is giving us climate change catastrophe, that gave us the great recession and that has now handed us Trump. How many grand failures does it take to realize that the republican ideology is bankrupt, ruined, corrupt, and a catastrophe on a mass scale?

coloradobob

The problem is that hurricanes and floods, worsened by climate change, do not recognize political borders or county lines. Their toll is shared by everyone. The latest estimate from Moody’s puts recovery from Harvey at $81 billion, much of which will end up paid by taxpayers across the United States.

coloradobob

“We ought to call federal flood insurance what it actually is,” as Phil Bedient, an engineer and colleague of Mr. Blackburn’s at Rice, put it. “It is subsidized floodplain development.” The Netherlands — the global gold standard for water management — does not offer a national flood insurance program for just this reason.

coloradobob

Poking the dragon .
That crude comment I made up thread, I do not regret. It should be said in it’s full wording.
Many thanks for RS letting it stand,
But things have changed .

“Why is this happening now? The geyser of women’s stories — and to a lesser extent, men’s — of celebrity assault began when the Bill Cosby case cracked the wall of silence and then Harvey Weinstein gave it another tap, the edifice topped and the torrent of pain and outrage roared through.”

Then think of “Women’s March” in January. 4 Million people showed up. Trust me we have awoken a sleeping dragon.

LOL. I try to be moderate in my moderation… It’s difficult sometimes. That particular comment was one I thought was rough but helpful.

In any case, we are reaping the whirlwind of systemic misogyny here. There’s a reason why my first fantasy story promoted feminist heroism. It was to empower a better worldview. A better way forward. To empower that. We need to confront the old world based abuses.

Leland Palmer

John B. Goodenough, 94 year old inventor of the lithium ion battery, has an idea for a new battery. This is no joke. The new battery would use solid glass electrolytes. He and his collaborators are talking about 3-10 times the energy density of lithium ion batteries, no tendency to form short circuit creating dendrites as the batteries age, and over 1000 cycles in the first small devices already built. They are also talking about replacing lithium with sodium, which is much cheaper and more plentiful, and they are talking about fast charging times. They are talking about devices that have a large capacitance, kind of like a cross between a solid electrolyte battery and a capacitor.

Would these batteries, if they work as well as it currently hoped, be good enough to totally drive internal combustion vehicles to extinction? Lithium ion batteries are good enough to do that, as Tesla is demonstrating. These new batteries would be more than good enough to drive a very rapid revolution, I think.

Johnny be good. He be more than good enough, if these batteries work as well as is hoped.

OK. So they need a battery platform to test this on and a scaling feedchain to make it work. If there are problems relative to lithium they’ll emerge in the first stage scaling. It would be helpful if a nascent automaker or EV manufacturer with small initial production goals served as the test platform for this. If these greatly heightened levels of quality can be achieved. It would be helpful to introduce such products to compete with traditional batteries.

I’m skeptical in the sense that lithium based batteries do keep improving. So there will be a race similar to what we see RE silicon vs thin film. However, if the physics of these new batteries is strong enough, they’ll win out against the mass production chain. Right now, we have lithium with rapidly increasing energy density, rapidly falling cost, and rapidly increasing charging times. So any new battery tech will have to hit a moving target to win.

The advent of a Li+ or Na+ glass electrolyte with a cation conductivity si 4 102 S cm1 at 25 1C and a motional enthalpy DHm = 0.06 eV that is wet by a metallic lithium or sodium anode is used to develop a new strategy for an all-solid-state, rechargeable, metal-plating battery. During discharge, a cell plates the metal of an anode of high-energy Fermi level such as lithium or sodium onto a cathode current collector with a low-energy Fermi level; the voltage of the cell may be determined by a cathode redox center having an energy between the Fermi levels of the anode and that of the cathode current collector. This strategy is demonstrated with a solid electrolyte that not only is wet by the metallic anode, but also has a dielectric constant capable of creating a large electric-double-layer capacitance at
the two electrode/electrolyte interfaces. The result is a safe, low-cost, lithium or sodium rechargeable battery of high energy density and long cycle life.”

Leland Palmer

Not sure anything is going on, that is out of the ordinary. The Iran/Iraq quake may have killed a lot of people due to poor or no building codes and masonry construction.

Still, global warming is shifting mass around. One effect I am worried about is the mass shift from poles toward the equator, as the ice caps melt and sea levels rise. This mass shift will want to slow the rotation of the earth, very slightly, due to conservation of angular momentum. So, like an ice skater spinning with arms extended, the equatorial regions will want to spin more slowly than the rest of the earth. What worries me is that the stresses might be applied unevenly. I’ve even speculated with no evidence whatsoever that these stresses might generate flood basalt eruptions.

There is an association between flood basalt eruptions and hyperthermal mass extinction events. I’ve speculated in the past that there might be a feedback loop built into some hyperthermal mass extinction events, with icecaps melting, shifting mass suddenly toward the equatorial regions, and those mass shifts applying stresses to the tectonic plates, leading to rifting events and flood basalt eruptions, and possibly geomagnetic reversals.

That is all speculation, though. What most people are worried about with earthquakes and global warming is isostatic rebound, as geological structures rebound from the weight of overlying ice sheets. I believe there is some evidence for isostatic rebound, with peer reviewed scientific papers claiming such effects on earthquakes in the past.

My personal opinion is that we’ll eventually see a signal if we keep melting ice and if SLR continues to accelerate. Especially in areas that lose glaciers or along continental shelf slopes. Not clear as yet.

Moving mass from glaciers into the sea does change stresses to fault lines and volcanoes. This can increase frequency of seismic activity in regions where stress changes are great enough. A subject of controversy to be sure. But the very nature of climate change is geophysical change.

That said, we should be clear that the major global seismic monitors have not yet recorded an increase of note in volcanism or rate of earthquake generation. So though we can say that loads change, we have not observed an earthquake or volcano based increased rate of disasters similar to what we’ve seen in regard to extreme weather. That may change as time moves forward and with more severe movements of mass from glacial loss and sea level rise. We do need to be very serious about avoiding the worst of it for a number of reasons. Potential geophysical risk related to earthquakes and volcanoes being just one.

Kassy

But after a three-year stall in their growth, human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions have not, in fact, peaked, an international team of scientists announced this morning.

In 2017, global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels and industry will once again rise by 2 percent, the scientists project, to a record 37 billion metric tons. Those emissions had increased by only a quarter of a percent from 2014 to 2016. Changes in land use, such as deforestation, will add around 4 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2017, bringing the global emissions total to an estimated 41 billion metric tons.

The resurgence tightens the time constraint on the world’s efforts to keep global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—a cap scientists increasingly believe is important to ward off climate change’s most catastrophic effects.

“What’s driving, really, the global trend is this pick-up in China,” says Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, and the lead author of one of several new emissions studies released today. An unexpected rise in coal-burning in China—due in part to a summer drought that diminished the country’s rivers and its generation of hydropower—was the biggest contributor to the global surge in emissions.

Not Just the Chinese

But China’s shift didn’t happen in a vacuum. Its emissions rose just as the United States and European Union each saw their emissions decrease more slowly than expected.

In the U.S., higher natural gas prices led to a slight rise in coal burning, for the first time in five years, while oil use also increased. As a result, emissions that had been declining about 1.2 percent a year dropped less than half a percent. In the E.U., emissions dropped less than a quarter percent after a decade of annual declines topping 2 percent a year.

On the other hand, India’s emissions, which had been steadily rising about 6 percent a year, as the country industrializes and rapidly brings electricity to rural areas, are projected to increase by only 2 percent in 2017. That good news is also troubling, because it’s almost certain not to last.

With five of the hottest years on record all having come just since 2010, the big question is whether the renewed emissions growth is a one-time slip or the new normal.

“It’s hard to say whether 2017 is a hiccup on the way to a trajectory that eventually peaks and goes downward—or if it’s about returning to high growth,” Le Quéré says.

We are in the age where carbon emissions are starting to level off. Whether they continue to do so will depend both on policy and choices by businesses. The fact that we now have fossil fuel sympathetic regimes in the U.S., Australia, in parts of Europe, and in Canada combined with growing political aggression on the parts of petrostates like Russia should be cause for serious concern to those of us in the movement. We are going to have to redouble our efforts to support both helpful industry and policy.

That said, this movement is a somewhat expected blip in the longer term trend. Coal use did rebound somewhat following big losses in 2014-2016. The overall trend is down, though, despite Trump’s best efforts. This can change with major policy victories by fossil fuel industry. We need to ensure that this does not happen or that any damage is limited. Otherwise, we will keep growing emissions into the early 2020s. That would be very unhelpful.

A new, dire “warning to humanity” about the dangers to all of us has been written by 15,000 scientists from around the world.

The message updates an original warning sent from the Union of Concerned Scientists that was backed by 1,700 signatures 25 years ago. But the experts say the picture is far, far worse than it was in 1992, and that almost all of the problems identified then have simply been exacerbated.

Mankind is still facing the existential threat of runaway consumption of limited resources by a rapidly growing population, they warn. And “scientists, media influencers and lay citizens” aren’t doing enough to fight against it, according to the letter.

If the world doesn’t act soon, there be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery, they warn.

… Prof Ripple and his colleagues have formed a new independent organisation called the Alliance of World Scientists to voice concerns about environmental sustainability and the fate of humanity.